Newsroom/World View

NEWSROOM for November 10, 2000

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

ANNOUNCER: Seen in classrooms the world over, this is CNN NEWSROOM.

TOM HAYNES, CO-HOST: Your week-ending NEWSROOM is under way. I'm Tom Haynes. Let's take a look at the rundown.

Making headlines, it's not over yet. The recount continues in the U.S. presidential election.

Moving on to "Editor's Desk," we find ourselves hanging with a Hollywood hottie.

Up next in "Worldview," we profile the life of a saint.

In "Chronicle," we make our way back to politics American style. We'll meet some young people getting a very special civics lesson.

Confusion and controversy surround election 2000. The balloting process in Palm Beach County, Florida comes under fire as recounts of votes cast in Florida's Tuesday election gets under way. But that's only half the problem.

With the ballots in Florida recounted, Republican candidate George W. Bush now holds only a slight lead, down from an advantage of almost 1,800 votes Wednesday. Still, it could be days, possibly weeks, before the presidential election is decided. Absentee ballots from overseas could trickle in for another week. And concerns are mounting about possible voting irregularities and ballot confusion in several Florida counties.

Voters in Palm Beach County say a confusing ballot may have led them to accidentally vote for Reform Party candidate Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Al Gore. Protesters want a revote because of that and because more than 19,000 ballots were tossed out for having more than one presidential candidate selected.

At stake, of course, are Florida's 25 electoral votes. The candidates who get those votes will claim more than the 270 needed to be elected president.

Now, despite Al Gore's claim that he won the popular vote, millions of ballots still need to be counted to determine who won a plurality.

WILLIAM DALEY, GORE CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: And more voted for Al Gore than Gov. Bush.

JACKSON: But it's not true -- not yet. There are still millions more votes to be tallied before it's clear who won the popular vote.

CURTIS GANS, CMTE. FOR THE STUDY OF THE AMERICAN ELECTORATE: 1.1 million outstanding ballots in California, absentees, that haven't been counted; 900,000 that haven't been counted in Washington; 400,000 that have been impounded in New York -- you can only begin a count today -- and about 300,000 votes in Oregon under that all-mail system that they're having trouble getting a final count on. And then there are scatterings of votes in other places, including Alaska, whose votes are highly incomplete. There are more than enough votes to close a 200,000-vote gap.

JACKSON: Gore does lead in the unofficial tally of the popular vote, but by a narrow and changing margin. On election night, he was running behind by half a million votes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: This is the raw vote total at this hour with...

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JACKSON: The next day he led by a quarter-million. Thursday afternoon, his lead over Bush had shrunk to less than 200,000 votes out of more than 100 million counted for all candidates. But those are just unofficial totals gathered by the news media, subject to change due to recounts or late tallied absentees.

In 1996, the unofficial totals being reported the morning after Election Day showed a total of nearly 93 million votes cast for president. But weeks later the final, official vote tally showed well over 96 million votes were actually cast. That's nearly 3 1/2 million additional votes. President Clinton's winning margin changed significantly when all the votes were counted. Morning-after totals had him beating Bob Dole by just over 7,760,000 votes. His official winning margin turned out to be more than 8 million, a change of more than 440,000 votes. This time, a change could go either way.

GANS: Absentee voters are, in general, tend to be more upscale and therefore likely to be more Republican. On the other hand, the bulk of the absentee is in the West Coast, and particularly in California, and that tends to be a little more liberal. So we don't know.

JACKSON (on camera): And we won't know -- not for a while. This one is still too close to call.

Brooks Jackson, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYNES: Some voters in Palm Beach County, Florida say confusion over the presidential ballot contributed to the unprecedented turn of events in this election. In light of that issue, the largest ballot publisher in the nation is pushing for a nationally standardized ballot, which it says would eliminate any uncertainty in future elections.

Ed Garsten on the politics involved in universalizing the system.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED GARSTEN, CNN DETROIT BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): After wading through the rhetoric of the campaign and coming to a decision, how reliable is the method used to record the vote?

CANDICE MILLER, MICHIGAN SECRETARY OF STATE: There are a number of communities that are not so affluent that even in Michigan where they're still using the old -- the great, big, old machines, you just pull down the lever. There even are some communities -- I think we have a couple hundred yet -- in Michigan that just use paper ballots.

GARSTEN: According to the chairman of Fidlar-Doubleday, the nation's largest manufacturer of ballots, the two most popular systems are the punch card, just like the one used in Palm Beach County, Florida, and the optical scan system, where voters fill in a space and the ballot is read and recorded after sliding through a scanner. The latest method uses a computer touch screen.

JOHN ELLIOTT, CHAIRMAN, FIDLAR-DOUBLEDAY: You choose your candidates for the various offices and issues at hand. If I want to vote it, it votes right away. And within a minute, it's downloaded.

GARSTEN: With a variety of voting modes out there, and the potential for confusion, Michigan secretary of state, as well as Fidlar-Doubleday, favor a single, standardized system.

MILLER: If people were to move from one municipality to the next, if they were familiar with the equipment it would be a help, I think.

ELLIOTT: With a standard it's important that we bring a reliability at all times to the voter, and one that's friendly to them.

GARSTEN: But a standard might be difficult to achieve in a nation of thousands of jurisdictions. Take Michigan.

MILLER: Village clerks, county clerks, city clerks, to the extent that we have about 1,700 various voter registration lists all being maintained in different systems out there. And having some uniformity has been quite a political discussion here in Michigan as well about how elections are run.

GARSTEN: Fidlar-Doubleday says no one method seems to favor a particular party. But if there was only one reliable system, the nation's voters might not have had to wait so long to find out who won.

Ed Garsten, CNN, Mount Clemens, Michigan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYNES: In our "Editor's Desk" today, we'll begin with a pooch pop quiz. Now, you can try to guess the names of some famous dogs in pop culture now. Can you identity them from these clues? The University of Georgia's mascot, "The Jetsons'" dog, Charlie Brown's dog, and some Disney spotted dogs.

Well, the answers are: the University of George mascot, which is, of course, the bulldog; "The Jetsons'" dog Astro; Charlie Brown's dog snoopy; and some Disney spotted dogs, those "101 Dalmatians."

Of course, that's only a start. There are lots of famous dogs, like Taco Bell popular chihuahua. Today you'll meet a new dog, one you might not have heard of yet.

Anne McDermott explains he's wiggled and waggled his way into hearts everywhere.

Lara Jo Regan, who owns Mr. Winkle, says some mistake him for a cat or koala, but he's all dog. Or is he an alien? or a bedroom slipper?

LARA JO REGAN, MR. WINKLE'S OWNER: Oh, that's great.

MCDERMOTT: Regan, a Los Angeles-based photographer, says Mr. Winkle is her best friend and favorite subject. Mr. Winkle has lots of patience for posing, and now he has his own calendar. Look for it on the Mr. Winkle Web site.

REGAN: I felt that I really had to share him with the world.

MCDERMOTT: And the world, it seems, has been waiting for Winkle. They ogle him. They e-mail him.

REGAN: "My name is Katie and I'm in the sixth grade."

MCDERMOTT: Katie e-mailed Mr. Winkle to let him know that, even though she loves her own dog, she chose to write a school paper on Mr. Winkle.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When you see him up close, you fall into Winkle-mania.

MCDERMOTT: Now, Winkle-mania has its downside: all those baths and those blowers. And then there's Clark the cat, who's getting a little bit jealous of bunking with a superstar. It wasn't always this way. When Regan found Mr. Winkle a few years back, he was abandoned, abused, and she took care of him.

REGAN: Just a minute, just a minute, almost ready.

MCDERMOTT: But she never could get that tongue of his to stay in his mouth. The vet says it's just too big, which makes mealtimes a merry mess. And then there's that lurching gait of his, probably a reminder of those ugly early days. But there's something rather gallant about this stoic little creature and his determination to run with the big dogs. What does Mr. Winkle do for Miss Regan? He makes her happy.

REGAN: Forget Prozac, just look at Mr. Winkle.

MCDERMOTT: Is there a Mrs. Winkle somewhere out there? maybe a litter of wee Winkles somewhere down the road? Maybe, but Regan doesn't seem to care. After all, there is only one Mr. Winkle.

Anne McDermott, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYNES: We head to the United States to examine the life of one of the newest saints in the Roman Catholic Church in "Worldview" today. Her work has touched the lives of many others around the county. Many say her life was one of divine guidance.

SHELLEY WALCOTT, CO-HOST: Early this month on November 1, Roman Catholic churches celebrated All Saints Day, a holy day commemorating the blessed. A saint is defined as one officially recognized especially through canonization as preeminent for holiness. To canonize is to declare a deceased person officially a saint.

Today in "Worldview," we focus on a new saint, Katharine Marie Drexel. After more than 30 years of investigating the two miracles required for sainthood, Drexel has been deemed a miracle worker by the Catholic Church. However, the sisters in her order not only want the world to know about the powers of her divine intervention, but rather what they see as her greatest achievement, proving that God is color- blind.

Kyra Phillips has the story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Images of the civil rights era echo through the words of Martin Luther King and the actions of Rosa Parks. But before the civil rights movement even began, there was Katharine Marie Drexel.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She was a civil rights leader, and quietly.

PHILLIPS: But her impact was profound. In 1858, Katharine Drexel was born into one of the most powerful families in America. The Drexel banks and railroads made her family one of the wealthiest in the country. And her father, Francis Drexel, was a one-time partner of J.P. Morgan.

Katharine Drexel lived a life of wealth and privilege. But her parents also gave her strong religious faith and a moral sense of obligation to those less fortunate. Traveling across the country on the family railroads, Katharine witnessed injustice and indignities that would touch her soul.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There wasn't anyone doing anything for those poor people, for the African-Americans, the Native Americans.

PHILLIPS: When her father died, she wrote in her journal that she would no longer live the life of a millionaire. Instead, this 29- year-old American heiress would give up her $20 million inheritance to become a nun, live a life of poverty, and use her family fortune to educate African-Americans and American Indians.

Sisters Inez (ph) and Thomasita (ph) are two of the last living nuns who worked with her as she battled against racism and forged a future for the poorest and most underprivileged children in America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She would go on to say, you must become 101 percent better than any teachers so when you train the children in school, you will lift them up to become 101 percent better than any white child.

PHILLIPS: One of those children was jazz great Lionel Hampton, who would be the first black musician to integrate the Benny Goodman Band; Dr. Norman Francis, who would earn 22 honorary degrees and become president of a university; and Dr. Marie Allen (ph), who's education would help save American Indians from a deadly disease.

Drexel began by building this quiet convent nestled among the trees in Bensalem, Pennsylvania. And she founded the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Together, they headed west to Window Rock, Arizona, to this impoverished and humbled Navajo reservation. Rooted in Catholic values, and sensitive to the native heritage, Drexel built St. Michael Indian School and began her mission to provide social justice. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: My parents brought me to school and my father said, You see that black woman in a dress? And I had never seen a nun or non-Indian, spoke only in Navaho. And he says to me, that lady, that woman in the black dress is going to take care of you. She's going to teach you.

PHILLIPS: Dr. Marie Allen is educating her people about diabetes, a disease that plagues the American Indian reservations. Over a 10-year period, some 90 percent of students are graduating from St. Michael Indian School and going to college. From the Western reservations, Drexel took her cause east, to the Louisiana Bayou.

She and her sisters came to New Orleans in 1915, building a school just for African-Americans. The racial hatred only fueled Drexel's perseverance. Xavier School would soon become the first black Catholic university in the country, recruiting young students like Norman Francis, who worked as a shoe-shine boy but wanted an education.

NORMAN FRANCIS, PRESIDENT, XAVIER UNIVERSITY: There was no segregation on this campus, but I just have to walk across the street to catch the bus to go to the movie, and I sat back of the bus. I came back, got off the bus, crossed the canal, and then I was back in an oasis where I was treated as a decent human being.

PHILLIPS: An oasis where Dr. Norman Francis is now president.

FRANCIS: Xavier reaffirmed that I was like anybody else, that I was going to be educated. And Katharine Drexel's mission was to educate for leadership. I'm fulfilling what her dream was: prepare for leadership.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Make sure you carry the scope properly.

PHILLIPS: Xavier University sends more African-Americans to medical school than any college in the country. And thousands of graduates are becoming scientists, scholars and musicians.

PHILLIPS (on camera): Did the sisters have rhythm, Lionel?

LIONEL HAMPTON, JAZZ MUSICIAN: Do they, oh, do they have rhythm.

PHILLIPS (voice-over): When you feel the rhythms of the great Lionel Hampton, you feel the spirit of Katharine Drexel.

HAMPTON: They teach you to be brothers and sisters. And when you go by God's rule, you ain't got no time for discrimination.

PHILLIPS: Lionel Hampton graduated from Drexel's school and went on to earn platinum and gold records. He was the first African- American in the Benny Goodman Band. And he'd play the drums the sisters taught him with another jazz great, Louis Armstrong. They played for Pope Pius XII.

HAMPTON: Louis Armstrong called -- forgot and called the Pope "Pops."

PHILLIPS (on camera): He called him Pops, huh?

HAMPTON: Yes. I said, no Louis, that's the holy father.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Here's a man who didn't take a gift and just keep it to himself, but he allowed himself to share it with everyone.

PHILLIPS (voice-over): This is why Sister Terry (ph) joined Katharine Drexel's mission in inner-city New York.

She wants her students at St. Borromeo in Harlem, where Drexel built yet another school, to find their talents and follow their dreams just like Lionel Hampton.

(on camera): What's so empowering about music and singing worship songs?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think because, for African-Americans, it's always been a way to express, it's always been the deepest way for us to verbally say what's on the heart.

PHILLIPS: When Katharine Drexel died at the age of 97, more than 500 sisters were teaching in 63 schools on American Indian reservations and in African-American communities. Now, Pope John Paul II is declaring her a saint, the highest recognition a Catholic can receive.

But it's not just for her extraordinary works. There are two required miracles for sainthood. And after an intense investigation by the Vatican and dozens of medical experts, the pope has proclaimed Katharine Drexel's intervention miraculous.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This infection was so great that it ate away two of the bones in my right ear.

PHILLIPS (voice-over): In 1960, Robert Gutherman (ph) developed a severe ear infection. He was 14 and going deaf. His doctors said there was nothing they could do.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The treatment was of no help. The pain was excruciating.

PHILLIPS: With medical science powerless, this devoted Catholic came to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament to pray for a miracle. Shortly thereafter, Robert says his agonizing infection went away. His doctor was astonished.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He wrote down, "His body is reconstructing anatomy." Next to that he wrote, "Is this possible?"

PHILLIPS: In 1993, Amy Wall's (ph) doctor asked the same question...

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is that a real four-leaf clover?

PHILLIPS: ... because this 7-year-old wasn't supposed to hear her parents' laughter. She was born deaf.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She had bilateral nerve deafness, which means she was equally deaf in both ears and there was nothing we could do about it.

PHILLIPS: So this family, too, prayed to Katharine Drexel for a miracle.

(on camera): Wow, so you got a miracle?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. I can't explain it.

PHILLIPS (voice-over): And neither could her doctors. They said Amy's hearing was suddenly restored.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She did a miracle to help me hear.

PHILLIPS: What the Vatican says are miracles are now drawing millions of people to Drexel's crypt, searching and praying to a woman who the Catholic Church is declaring a saint. But to the people she taught and the people she helped, Katharine Marie Drexel was always a saint, and the real miracle was her life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm sorry she's going to be a saint because of a miracle, a physical miracle. We believe that she was a saint long before that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sister Katharine's words were always, trust in divine providence. It will go on, the work will go on.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYNES: Well, protests and lawsuits, confusion and controversy over the future of the U.S. presidency. As the drama unfolds in Florida, more and more people across the nation are wondering how the country got itself into this mess in the first place.

Well, Anne McDermott found out everyone has an opinion.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MCDERMOTT (voice-over): The election was supposed to be a standard civics lesson for Mrs. Reed's (ph) sixth graders. Instead, it's left them just as confused and upset as all the grownups.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's kind of weird what's going on right now because this has never happened.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This is like -- is it exciting to you to see this whole process happening?

MCDERMOTT: Well, in a way. He was watching TV election night and Gore was leading and then the commercial break came, and then...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I went away and then Gore had -- when I came back, Gore had less votes and I was like, OK, what just happened?

MCDERMOTT: Some of these kids say what ought to happen is abolish the Electoral College.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think the electoral votes shouldn't really count, because what's the whole point of voting?

MCDERMOTT: But he says the electoral votes should count in certain circumstances.

(on camera): So if it's good for your candidate, it's a good system?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

MCDERMOTT: What if it's bad for your candidate?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Then it's a bad system.

MCDERMOTT (voice-over): Several children suggested Gore and Bush become co-presidents. But this kid figures that won't work.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Gore wants to win, but Bush wants to win too, so they're going to fight until there's, like, nothing left to do. So it's just -- it's crazy.

MCDERMOTT: So they turned to the class assignment: writing about the election. This student began her paper by writing, "Something weird is going on."

Anne McDermott, CNN, Newhall, California.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYNES: And so here we are, three days after an election in the United States and still no president-elect. It may sound like a national crisis, but truth is there's really no reason to panic. The United States has faced turmoil at the top before, and some way, somehow, things have always been resolved.

JAY LENO, HOST: Man, and what is it down to, just a couple of votes? Boy, wouldn't it be great if this whole thing wound up being decided by Elian Gonzalez's crazy relatives? Uncle Lazarus and the crazy fisherman, we got the final vote right here!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORTON: But it isn't just funny. Oprah's worried.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW")

OPRAH WINFREY, HOST: But we're live in Chicago on November 9 and we are leaderless. Aren't we still shocked?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MORTON: And some of us are.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a lot of problems with counting and exactly how many votes are actually valid and whatnot, and it just makes me think that, whoever they elect, is that really our president or is it a counting mistake?

MORTON: Nowadays, everything is instant. But elections used to be slow. And even then, the U.S. always muddled through somehow. Abraham Lincoln was murdered. His vice president, Andrew Johnson, was impeached in a country bitterly divided at the end of the Civil War. But power passed smoothly. Andrew Jackson won the popular vote and the electoral vote but not a majority. And the House elected John Quincy Adams president. Power passed smoothly. And Jackson won the presidency four years later. Same with Grover Cleveland, won the popular vote, but the Electoral College went for Benjamin Harrison and Cleveland got elected four years later.

When Richard Nixon resigned the presidency -- something that had never happened before -- in 1974, people said this will be bad for the country. But it was only bad for Nixon. The country, under Gerald Ford, was calm. It was the same Nixon who, when he lost a very close election to John Kennedy in 1960, did not pursue vote fraud charges in Illinois but accepted the results. This time, well, everyone's talking about it.

TERESA CHAPPEL, REPUBLICAN ELECTOR: If I was on the other side, I probably would say, yes, the popular vote. However, it is the Electoral College in this country that elects our president and I think that should hold.

MORTON: They'll debate changing the system for next time. But the odds are this election will be decided under the law, fairly calmly, no coups, no national collapse. And if we need a temporary president, somebody to mind the store while the lawsuits get settled, I know just the guy, and so do you. You know he'd love to be asked. It absolutely beats being the spouse of a famous senator.

Bruce Morton, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE)

HAYNES: And stay with CNN NEWSROOM. We'll be watching just like you will. Have a good weekend, and we'll see you back here on Monday.

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